For months, cities around the state have ramped up enforcement against people sleeping in tents on the street. Now, some are focusing on a new target: People who live in vehicles.
Wayne Gardiner, 58, watched his home of 20 years roll onto the back of a flatbed tow truck in San Jose on a recent Monday afternoon. Then he realized he’d forgotten something inside.
He threw open compartments in the bottom of the RV as fast as he could, looking for the pressure-washing tools he uses for cleaning jobs to make extra money. As the RV rose up onto the truck, about to head off to a junk yard, Gardiner found the black backpack full of tools and pulled it out.
Then he stood back with his rottweiler, Buddy, and some of his possessions in green trash bags at his feet, and watched the truck drive away. He held his emotions in check.
“If I get myself involved with that, I’ll be a wreck,” Gardiner said. “I gotta let it go.”
San Jose is towing vehicles from different areas of the city in a new effort to rid the streets of lived-in vehicles. Last month, it started clearing its largest homeless encampment – a makeshift city in Columbus Park, where Gardiner and hundreds of other people had been sleeping in cars, RVs and tents.
San Francisco passed a new policy this summer banning large vehicles from parking on any city street for more than two hours — effectively making it illegal to live in an RV on the street.
Even smaller cities, including Carlsbad outside of San Diego, and San Mateo in the Bay Area, have adopted new policies targeting people living in cars and RVs.
